Executive Summary

In March 2021, the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) partnered with the Munich Security Conference (MSC) to conduct a tabletop exercise on reducing high-consequence biological threats. Conducted virtually, the exercise examined gaps in national and international biosecurity and pandemic preparedness architectures and explored opportunities to improve capabilities to prevent and respond to high-consequence biological events. Participants included 19 senior leaders and experts from across Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe with decades of combined experience in public health, biotechnology industry, international security, and philanthropy.

The exercise scenario portrayed a deadly, global pandemic involving an unusual strain of monkeypox virus that emerged in the fictional nation of Brinia and spread globally over 18 months. Ultimately, the exercise scenario revealed that the initial outbreak was caused by a terrorist attack using a pathogen engineered in a laboratory with inadequate biosafety and biosecurity provisions and weak oversight. By the end of the exercise, the fictional pandemic resulted in more than three billion cases and 270 million fatalities worldwide.

2021 NTI-MUNICH SECURITY CONFERENCE TABLETOP EXERCISE PARTICIPANTS EXERCISE CO-CHAIRS Dr. Ernest J. Moniz Co-Chair and CEO Nuclear Threat Initiative Former U.S. Secretary of Energy Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger Chairman Munich Security Conference PARTICIPANTS Mr. Arnaud Bernaert Head, Health Security Solutions SICPA Dr. Beth Cameron Senior Director, Office of Global Health Security and Biodefense U.S. National Security Council Mr. Luc Debruyne Strategic Advisor to the CEO Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Dr. Ruxandra Draghia-Akli Global Head Johnson & Johnson Global Public Health R&D Janssen Research & Development Dr. Chris Elias President, Global Development Division Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Sir Jeremy Farrar Director Wellcome Trust Dr. George Gao Director-General, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) Vice President, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Director and Professor, CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Dean, Medical School, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Dr. Margaret (Peggy) A. Hamburg Interim Vice President Global Biological Policy and Programs, Nuclear Threat Initiative Former Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Ms. Angela Kane Visiting Professor Paris School of International Affairs (SciencesPo), and Tsinghua University Dr. Emily Leproust CEO and Co-Founder Twist Biosciences Dr. Elisabeth Leiss Deputy Director of the Governance and Conflict Division German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ) Ms. Izumi Nakamitsu Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs Dr. John Nkengasong Director Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention Sam Nunn Founder and Co-Chair Nuclear Threat Initiative Former U.S. Senator Dr. Michael Ryan Executive Director WHO Health Emergencies Programme Dr. Joy St. John Executive Director CARPHA Dr. Petra Wicklandt Head of Corporate Affairs Merck KGaA

ATTACK
May 15, 2022

June 5, 2022
• Monkeypox outbreak in Brinia 1,421 cases/4 deaths
• No international warnings or advisories

January 10, 2023
• 83 countries affected 70M cases/1.3M deaths
• Monkeypox engineered to be vaccine-resistant
• National responses: effects of early action
• International supply chain challenges

May 10, 2023
• 480M cases/27M deaths
• Revelation of terror group origins—infiltration of civilian bio lab

December 1, 2023
• 3.2B cases/271M deaths
• Global differences in national responses contribute to significantly variable outcomes

https://web.archive.org/web/20220521004440/https://www.nti.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/NTI_Paper_BIO-TTX_Final.pdf
https://archive.ph/Ll2JP

Nobody wants to see a nuclear war: Pentagon chief

26 April 2022

“Nobody wants to see a nuclear war happen. It’s a war where all sides lose," the Pentagon chief said on Tuesday at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had expressed concern that there was a considerable risk of a nuclear conflict breaking out in the region.

Lavrov warned on Monday that the threat of nuclear war “should not be underestimated,” and that “the danger is serious.”

Austin told reporters following the meeting with European military leaders that warning others about the dangers of a nuclear war was "dangerous and unhelpful".

Lavrov had warned about a "real" danger of World War III breaking out as NATO countries led by the US met in Germany to plan new ways to supply Kiev's combatants with deadly weapons and military equipment to fight Russian troops.

Lavrov said that sending more weapons to Ukraine was “pouring oil on the fire.”

“NATO, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy,” Lavrov said.

In late March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the West had declared a “total war” against his country, employing tactics comparable to those of Nazi Germany.

“They have declared a true hybrid war, a total war against us,” he said.

▲ The Monkeypox card.[archive.ph]
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https://web.archive.org/web/20220610072152/https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2022/04/26/681054/US-Pentagon-Chief-Austin-Nuclear-war
https://archive.ph/HFKla

Russia was planning to use monkeypox as bioweapon, claims ex-Soviet scientist

New Delhi Updated: May 21, 2022, 04:10 PM(IST)

Russia considered using monkeypox as a bioweapon until at least till the 1990s, a former Soviet scientist has claimed, reports British tabloid The Metro.

The claims were made by Kanat Alibekov, also known as Kenneth Alibek, who was the Soviet Union's bioweapons expert until its fall in 1991. Later, he stayed in Russia for a year before moving to the US.

In a recently discovered 1998 interview with the American Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Project (CBWNP), Alibekov, who allegedly oversaw 32,000 employees over 40 facilities, claimed that the Soviet country had a programme to utilise viruses as weapons.

“So, we developed a special program to determine what ‘model’ viruses could be used instead of human smallpox. We tested vaccinia virus, mousepox virus, rabbitpox virus, and monkeypox virus as models for smallpox.”

“The idea was that all research and development work would be conducted using these model viruses. Once we obtained a set of positive results, it would take just two weeks to conduct the same manipulations with the smallpox virus and to stockpile the warfare agent.

“We would have in our arsenal a genetically altered smallpox virus that could replace the previous one.”

The scientist further claimed that after the end of the USSR, the successor Russia’s defence ministry continued working with monkeypox to “create future biological weapons”.

The same year, he was brought before a United States Congress hearing, where he said he was "convinced that Russia’s biological weapons program has not been completely dismantled”.

Monkeypox was first identified in the 1950s when two outbreaks occurred in colonies of monkeys used for research purposes, with the first human case reported in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The illness is often likened to a milder form of smallpox, a disease that has been eradicated globally through widespread vaccination against the smallpox virus.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220523195859/https://www.wionews.com/world/russia-was-planning-to-use-monkeypox-as-bioweapon-claims-ex-soviet-scientist-480996
https://archive.ph/cmcdj

May 20, 2022

BREAKING—the @WHO to convene emergency meeting of expert group due to #monkeypox outbreak to discuss declaring a PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY OF INTERNATIONAL CONCERN (PHEIC). The #SARSCoV2 had received an PHEIC alert in late January 2020.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220520125922/https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1527633907889364994
https://archive.ph/f9hzI

May 20, 2022

Folks- I know a lot of past monkeypox data shows it’s less transmissible. But have we seen a simultaneous multi country outbreak of monkeypox like of the degree of the past week before? No. Something is different. Something has changed with the virus. Let’s be precautious.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220523195721/https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1527581552942759937
https://archive.ph/yCsHQ

20/05/2022 - 12:12

Paris (AFP) – Several cases of monkeypox have been detected in North America and Europe since early May, sparking concern that the disease, endemic in parts of Africa, is spreading.

Most people recover within several weeks and monkeypox has only been fatal in rare cases.

There have been thousands of human infections in parts of Central and Western Africa in recent years but it is rare in Europe and North America.

France declared its first case on Friday.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220520125302/https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220520-monkeypox-a-rare-disease-with-low-fatality-rates
https://archive.ph/p0c02